In this monograph, I explore the burgeoning discourse of “accessibility” within contemporary arts and theatre non-profit institutions. I examine performances and their institutional contexts—including company mission statements, program notes, advertisements, bathroom signs, and post-show chats—to investigate the ways theatres use the rhetoric of accessibility to negotiate control of the audience’s varying experiences and to evade .

I look at Shakespeare theatres as particular sites where the theatre must mediate transhistorical themes of gendered and racialized identity for its audiences. I argue that theatrical outreach and performances often betray institutional anxieties and biases about managing, and in some cases actually narrowing, audience access to Shakespeare.